The Rune Stone Diaries

This post is a continuation of the previous one, but it won’t be very long. Last time (which is just a few minutes ago) I found all the inscriptions that Öpir or Œpir had carved. I copied them from Samnordisk Runtextdatabas and then pasted them into a text document, and below you can see the result in the attached file. Oh, and when there is a cross after the U+number – that means that the rune stone is now lost, but the text (and often also the design) was recorded some time before it was lost or destroyed. Even if the part of the stone where Œpirs name would have been (if the stone is partly damaged) is gone, his way of designing them where so individual, that the runologists are sure he was the one who carved it.

Here’s a programme that you have to have : Samnordisk Runtextdatabas. You’ll find it here : http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm/?languageId=1 It’s for free, but it only works in Windows. I’ll show you how to switch it over to English and how to navigate in it.

Now it’s time to chose which province in Sweden / which country to take a closer look at.

You can see that the menus (Inscription, Edit, etc) are now in English. Pick one province. You’ll see below that I chose Uppland, which is where you’ll find most of the runic inscriptions in Sweden.

Under Format I chose Text format, and then selected from the row to the left and moved them to the right – then OK. Then you could get what the rune stone says rune by rune, translation into modern Swedish and to English, where you can find it, the dating, material, and other information also if you please.

Then I chose Carver under Selection….

…. and wrote Öpir, and chose a single inscription – then the rest of them….

When I took a closer look at U 687, I wanted to see where to find it on Google Earth. Just click on the map-icon (or press F6).

That’s how I found it : http://www.runesnruins.com/runes/u687.html